


Until Spring

by Desseruh



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abuse, Countdown, Crazy, F/M, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Heal Me or Die, Healing, Healing Trope, Lizard, Medical Conditions, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Obsessive Behavior, Past Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Rare Pairings, Snakes, Strong Haruno Sakura, Threatening, Threats of torture, Torture, Unpopular pairing, days, powerful sakura
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28105830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desseruh/pseuds/Desseruh
Summary: She had until the snow melted to do the magnum opus of her healing career. If she failed- well, there were worse fates than death.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Orochimaru, Haruno Sakura & Yakushi Kabuto, Haruno Sakura/Orochimaru
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	1. Day 34

_ Day 34 _

His smile reminded her of a papercut. 

It was a lot like Orochimaru, but the sheen of his glasses made it seem deader. As if there wasn’t anything behind his reptilian existence. 

“How are we feeling today, Sakura-chan?” His voice was slick, his teeth jagged and his tongue wet. 

He knew how she was feeling. 

Four days with a bloody nose. 

A week and a half of eyes so bloodshot her sclera had turned red. 

And at least three weeks with a slowly progressing migraine. 

He knew how she was feeling. This slow torture and the grating edge of her fumbling ability to reject his offers. She had been weakened  _ quickly _ and without stop since she had been... _ incarcerated _ by Otogakure. 

A simple stakeout mission devolving into  _ this.  _

Sakura didn’t answer him and simply used the edge of her medical gown to wipe away the blood dripping off her upper lip. 

Not that it helped much- it just resumed its drip. She had developed thrombocytopenia, and the constant gas they pumped into her holding chamber had affected even her blood. 

She wondered how long it would take until her hair began to fall out...or she began to bleed from her fucking eyes. Hell, she couldn’t feel her fingers anymore, so how long until they turned necrotic and fell off?

“Dandy.” Her voice was rough to her own ears, her throat strained. “Just… dandy.”

Sakura shifted, putting her head in her hands- heels pressed into her eyes despite having an obvious enemy standing not three meters away. 

If he wanted to kill her- then he should have just done it. For fucks sake- just kill-

“Hmm.” He sounded closer now. “Just dandy.”

Then his fingers- cold and strange- were against the back of her head. Immediately her body tensed, her hands falling from her eyes in time for her forehead to be slammed against the table she was sat at. 

…

…

…

“-may have been a bit too rough.” A splitting headache shook her. Muscles tensed and hands shaking. There was blood in her lap and she couldn’t hear anything but a low buzz out of one ear. 

“Are you ok, Sakura-chan?” She could hear the smile in his voice, her mind rattling and turning in her skull. 

Her forehead was still pressed to the table and she was looking down at her lap. There was blood on her tongue. 

She could see his shoes on the other side of the table. 

“No.”

“Good.” He shifted, she could see the shoes move as he crossed his legs. “That’s what I like to hear.”

The world tipped a bit and the edges hazed in and out, but Sakura still stayed present. Weak and unable to lift her head, but still there. 

“Alright. I assume you are listening- Tap your fingers if you are listening.” If she could grit her teeth, she would have. But… submissively, she tapped her fingers against the table. “Lovely. Now. The contract proceeds as…”

Sakura would have rolled her eyes. This was the 34th time she had heard this conversation. The same fucking words and the same distilled, underwhelmed voice. 

It almost felt like a trope at this point. 

One, heal Orochimaru and whoever the fuck needed healing that Mr.Lizard Mouth couldn’t. Two, die immediately after. Well, the second part wasn’t  _ spoken. _ Or even implied that she was to die afterward. But that was  _ clear.  _ She wasn’t getting Sasuke back for Naruto or Konohagakure. She wasn’t getting the  _ secrets _ to the body snatchers. 

Nothing. She was getting nothing. 

She- if allowed to leave- would stumble back to Konohagakure and the  _ elders _ would have her  _ put down _ like a  _ fucking dog.  _

“What do I get?” It was slurred, she didn’t even mean to speak. She had wanted to stay quiet for the whole ordeal like she did the previous days, only to be put under a chemical cloud until she was awoken the next day to undertake it again. 

“Excuse me?” 

“What do I get?” 

There was a clear pause. Then, like the fucking lizard he was, Kabuto chuckled. 

“Well, Sakura-chan.” He leaned forward and his legs uncrossed themselves. His hand made its way into her hair again, rubbing circles on the back of her head. “There is a long list of things we could do. Just sign the document. Accept the seal. Simple as that, Sakura-chan.”

Her tongue flicked out, dragging against her chapped lips. His hand moved to her neck. 

Both of them were losing their resolve. This wasn’t the worse he could do, this chemical torture. He was an  _ exceedingly _ intelligent  _ medical-nin.  _ He could bring her back from the dead just to kill her again. 

If she could have cried, she would have. But all she felt was this… drifting, awful feeling deep in her. She wasn’t getting out of this. 

Well, maybe if she denied long enough Orochimaru would  _ fucking  _ die and she would be killed and her honor would be intact. 

But then- there was a likelihood that Orochimaru would  _ just _ take more bodies. Suck the world dry and keep her in stasis to wither into more of a shambling corpse than she was now. 

“My fingers are numb.”

There was a sigh and the hand that had been making slow circles around the junction of her head and neck grasped one of her hands. Rolling the joints between his fingers, bending them. 

“Well then. The contract was just a formality. Hold still.”

What was she supposed to do?  _ Fight back? _ She couldn’t lift her fucking head let alone- 

The shifting of hands,  _ complex _ and  _ forbidden,  _ forming a pattern she couldn’t even see as it spiked a harsh trail of goosebumps over her skin. Then, that  _ slam _ of his power-infused hand into the back of her neck. 

Every nerve, every dendrite, every myelin sheath- Her  _ chakra paths _ and her  _ locked away reserves _ . 

Sakura didn’t make a noise. All she did was let one of her numb hands curl into a fist as she exhaled all the air in her lungs. It felt horrible. Sparking. Like a foot that fell asleep before being bashed at. 

Every molecule of her being  _ vibrated _ and  _ shifted _ under her skin. She could practically feel the bits of seal spread over her neck and down her spine...

All of a sudden- or perhaps she just missed their appearance- she was being lifted by her twitching arms and legs before being placed on a gurney. The familiar feeling of the thin mattress and the smell of alcohol plumbing around her. 

Then the straps placed around her wrists and ankles, forcing her stiff joints down, were tightened until her bones ached. Securing her down, holding her still-  _ God her body hurt.  _ Her body fucking  _ hurt. _

Her skin felt like the frailest of papers and her once-massive strength and reserves felt dwindled and dry. She could taste only blood and her vision, when she could see, was blurry and warped. Someone, masked and frightfully wrapped from head to toe in bandages, pressed an I.V. drip into the blue veins of her inner elbow.

  
Sakura had to restrain  _ herself _ from biting them like a rabid dog. 


	2. Day 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura and her seal.

**Day 43**

Perseverance. It was always all about perseverance.

For Naruto. For Sasuke. For her.

All of it.

There was a subtle moment, Sakura's head cocked to the side in contemplation, where she wondered what would have happened if she had just given up. Withheld her interest in Sasuke, ignored Naruto more, and just… stopped.

But that wasn't her. That was not Sakura Haruno.

She made a fist, the cuff around her wrist rattling, and wondered.

Her muscles had atrophied, the tight strain of muscles withered down and her bones pressed against her skin like mountains. Yet, she could sense her power. Locked deep under her skin and against her bones, chakra swirling and drifting between her gateways.

Releasing the fist, Sakura looked up and stared at the wall ahead of her. Legs stretched out and tied down in front of her, bare and cold. Next to her, a saline nutrient feed dripped solution into the bruised vein of her left arm. Sustaining her body.

Was this worse than being put into that chemical sleep?

Maybe. It was boring. Not just... _boring,_ but boring as torture. Her hands and feet had been bound to the bed and the room didn't change at all.

No one ever came in.

Perhaps it was distinctly strange that Sakura wanted something to happen. She'd been spoiled by Kohonagakuru and its _constants:_ the many patients, the list of tasks, the long training sessions where she mastered her craft.

But now she was here. Staring at a grey wall for _days._

Either that or sleeping. Which Sakura did with a clear head, knowing very morbidly that if either Kabuto or Orochimaru- _sorry,_ _ **LoRd OrOcHiiMaarU**_ wanted her dead it would be far too easy.

If she was being honest- she had given up. Not in the way of just expecting to die or whither or whatever-

No. That would have been too simple.

If she didn't want to stare at the grey walls, she could look down and stare are the living representation of her capture as it made slow circles under her skin. A scrawl of kanji, a seal so in-depth that it _lived_.

A serpentine seal dragging endlessly up her legs, around her arms, between her breasts, and over her stomach. It told her things beyond what words or script could ever say, that she was property now.

It would move with her. Twitch when she twitched-

Hell, on the first day in medical solitude, when she had been _pissed out of her fucking mind_ it had restricted on her. Restricted like paralysis, shocked her like an _animal._

A dog with a shock collar. A _pet._

She was a prodigy at chakra control. A _spit in your face_ fucking prodigy. She was capable of making the Strength of a Hundred Seal with more _proficiency_ than even her predecessor. Eat your heart out, twelve-year-old Sakura you're a badass now, surprise!

But even with _that._ With her clear abilities, which she had worked hard for, without a tailed-beast and without an elaborate and inbred clan to give her monstrous power- she was cut short. A seal being her downfall.

And Sakura could feel this seal as it hummed under her skin, dusting over her own locked chakra.

Of course, she had already begun thinking about how to _break_ the seal. Every time it twisted over her forearm or legs, she would try and pick apart the mix of kanji and runes. And, unfortunately for her, it was a mess.

Incomprehensible.

And the power leeched into it was _immense._ And Sakura had too then wonder where all that power had come from. Certainly not from the dead-eyed, soulless little Kabuto. No, _no,_ he didn't have the _guts_ for that kind of power.

But Otogakure was Otogakure. And she would remember Sasuke. And Kimimaro. And all of the little files about Otogakure from the backroom file cabinets in Tsunade's office.

He had other sources, she surmised. The deal and the seal had been paid in more than her own blood.

And, of course, that just pissed Sakura off to think about.

As her heart rate increased so did the flow of the serpent seal, its body twisting and coiling over her skin in a warning. It made her bones itch and her teeth ache to watch it, to feel it. To know its control.

And then, of course, all her muscles locked at once and she felt the sipping _sting_ trail up and down her limbs. It wasn't… as horrible as the first time it had happened. Just a horrible tenseness that made all her limbs tense at once.

A dog with a shock collar.

It was over quickly. But, as a naturally angry person, Sakura could foresee only struggles in the future. Just another form of torture… any irritation, any rage. It would take her out. It would destroy her. 

God damn, she should have taken that anger management course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have started the third chapter. I think I am going to aim to keep the chapters locked to 'Days' (unless they get so short that it wouldn't be fair). But, for right now, that is the plan. 
> 
> This is kind of a boring chapter. I know. I get it. Please review, however! I was surprised on how many people initially reviewed and commented on this. It was lovely to see.

**Author's Note:**

> Please Review! 
> 
> This is my rare-pair.


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